{{cquote|German writers picked up on earlier anti-Enlightenment theories of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to rule the world. During the French Revolution, the Jews, along with the Masons, were identified as forces for liberalism, secularism, and capitalism. German writers quickly found the Jews to be a more popular target than the Masons, perhaps because they were more visible or more different. The originally Judeo-Masonic theories eventually discarded the other conspirators, such as the Templars and the Illuminati, and focused on the Jews.<ref>Tyler Cowen, "[http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-socialist-roots-of-modern-anti-semitism/ The Socialist Roots of Modern Anti-Semitism]," ''The Freeman'' (Foundation for Economic Education), January 1997</ref>}}

{{cquote|German writers picked up on earlier anti-Enlightenment theories of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to rule the world. During the French Revolution, the Jews, along with the Masons, were identified as forces for liberalism, secularism, and capitalism. German writers quickly found the Jews to be a more popular target than the Masons, perhaps because they were more visible or more different. The originally Judeo-Masonic theories eventually discarded the other conspirators, such as the Templars and the Illuminati, and focused on the Jews.<ref>Tyler Cowen, "[http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-socialist-roots-of-modern-anti-semitism/ The Socialist Roots of Modern Anti-Semitism]," ''The Freeman'' (Foundation for Economic Education), January 1997</ref>}}

−

==20th-century left-wing anti-Semitism==

+

==20th-century: Stalinist anti-Semitism==

According to Henry L. Feingold, director of the Jewish Resource Center at Baruch College, "socialism contained the seeds to become the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals of the Left."<ref>Henry L. Feingold, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=-ZrhFjuebEEC Lest memory cease: finding meaning in the American Jewish past]'' (Syracuse University Press, 1996) ISBN 0815604009, p. 81</ref> In the 20th century, those seeds took root and grew into a forest bearing poisonous fruit. For example, in the former Soviet Union, even after the death of the anti-Semite Stalin,<ref>See Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov, "[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/egorov.htm From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism]," ''Journal of Cold War Studies'', Vol. 4, No. 1 (Winter 2002), pp. 66-80. Cf. Louis Rapoport, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=5rZtAAAAMAAJ Stalin's war against the Jews: the doctors' plot and the Soviet solution]'' (Free Press, 1990) ISBN 0029258219</ref> Soviet anti-Semitism persisted:

According to Henry L. Feingold, director of the Jewish Resource Center at Baruch College, "socialism contained the seeds to become the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals of the Left."<ref>Henry L. Feingold, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=-ZrhFjuebEEC Lest memory cease: finding meaning in the American Jewish past]'' (Syracuse University Press, 1996) ISBN 0815604009, p. 81</ref> In the 20th century, those seeds took root and grew into a forest bearing poisonous fruit. For example, in the former Soviet Union, even after the death of the anti-Semite Stalin,<ref>See Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov, "[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/egorov.htm From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism]," ''Journal of Cold War Studies'', Vol. 4, No. 1 (Winter 2002), pp. 66-80. Cf. Louis Rapoport, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=5rZtAAAAMAAJ Stalin's war against the Jews: the doctors' plot and the Soviet solution]'' (Free Press, 1990) ISBN 0029258219</ref> Soviet anti-Semitism persisted:

{{cquote|Since World War II Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth&mdash;and this includes Germany. By contrast, wherever anticapitalism or precapitalism has prevailed the status of Jews and Judaism has either undergone deterioration or is highly precarious. Thus at this very moment the country where developing global capitalism is most advanced, the United States, accords Jews and Judaism a freedom that is known nowhere else in the world and that was never known in the past. It is a freedom that is not matched even in Israel ... By contrast, in the Soviet Union, the citadel of anticapitalism, the Jews are cowed by anti-Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God.<ref>Ellis Rivkin, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=MUk1SwAACAAJ The shaping of Jewish history: A radical new interpretation],'' (C. Scribner's Sons, 1971) ISBN 0684132362, p. 240</ref>}}

{{cquote|Since World War II Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth&mdash;and this includes Germany. By contrast, wherever anticapitalism or precapitalism has prevailed the status of Jews and Judaism has either undergone deterioration or is highly precarious. Thus at this very moment the country where developing global capitalism is most advanced, the United States, accords Jews and Judaism a freedom that is known nowhere else in the world and that was never known in the past. It is a freedom that is not matched even in Israel ... By contrast, in the Soviet Union, the citadel of anticapitalism, the Jews are cowed by anti-Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God.<ref>Ellis Rivkin, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=MUk1SwAACAAJ The shaping of Jewish history: A radical new interpretation],'' (C. Scribner's Sons, 1971) ISBN 0684132362, p. 240</ref>}}

Left-wing anti-Semitism

Although many leftists try to deny it, “modern, political anti-Semitism is a creature of the left as well as the right,” admits Warwick University Sociology Professor Robert Fine, a member of the Conference of Socialist Economists.[1] "[A]nti-Semitism that we might call populist or democratic.... is linked equally to the left and right," agrees George L. Mosse, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "to the new nationalism, but also to certain tendencies in socialism."[2] Omer Bartov of Brown University comments:

“

[O]ne of the most frightening aspects of Hitler's book is not that he said what he said at the time, but that much of what he said can be found today in innumerable places ... As long as it does not have Hitler's name attached to it, this deranged discourse will be ignored or allowed to pass. The voices that express these opinions do not belong to a single political or ideological current ... They belong to the right and the left, to the religious and the secular, to the West and the East, to the rabble and the leaders, to terrorists and intellectuals, students and peasants, pacifists and militants, expansionists and anti-globalization activists.[3]

”

Twenty-five years ago in the heart of the Cold War debate, anti-Americanism, anti-Israeli sentiment, and anti-Semitism "were fringe phenomena while now they are more fashionable and mainstream ... [T]hese sentiments are no longer the monopoly of any particular part of the political spectrum. They are there on the European Left, Right, and in the center," agrees Jeffrey Gedman, president of London's Legatum Institute.[4]

Origins of left-wing anti-Semitism

There were “strong anti-Semitic currents on the European left in Marx’s time," writes Fine; "[T]here is a strong tradition of anti-Semitism on the Left.”[5] One "need not venture far into the pre-1930 literature of anti-economics before encountering conspicuous anti-Semitic effusions," observes William Coleman of the Australian National University. "One may say that, before about 1930, anti-economics and anti-Semitism existed in striking conjunction." He adds that "the conjunction was not accidental... [A]nti-economics and modern anti-Semitism shared some leading ideological contentions."[6]

From the outset, according to French historian Marc Crapez, European racism and socialism were closely affiliated.[7] In addition, "anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism were deeply intertwined," writes Mosse. "[I]n fact, they had been connected since the middle-ages."[8] "For centuries, Jewish economic success led anti-Semites to condemn capitalism as a form of Jewish domination and exploitation," writes Columbia University history professor Jerry Z. Muller, "or to attribute Jewish success to unsavory qualities of the Jews themselves."[9]

“The Marxist, postmodern and post-Zionist pseudo-liberal views on democracy lead back to the totalitarian democracy of the French Enlightenment, in which anti-Semitism formed an essential ingredient,” writes Shlomo Sharan of Tel Aviv University.[10] At that time, "the Jews symbolised the distressing symptoms of modernity ushered in by capitalism and political liberalism," writes Christian Wiese, professor of Jewish history at the University of Sussex.[11]

“

Dissatisfaction with the practical consequences of Liberalism was even stronger in economic than in political matters; anti-capitalism was, after all, one of the oldest and most natural forms of anti-Semitism. Liberal society was characterized by a high degree of social mobility with a premium on individual worth and ability. Perhaps this pill was the hardest to swallow. All those who had an assured place in an ordered hierarchy, even if it was a comparatively low one, looked with distaste on an order which allowed others to rise to positions of eminence and influence ... anti-Semitism is anti-capitalist since capitalism is one of the causes of social mobility.[12]

”

“[T]he sudden prominence of a few Jews who benefited from economic liberalisation provoked a backlash from the Left.”[13] In France, writes Göttingen historian Karlheinz Weissmann, many on the left saw the Jews "as the embodiment of capitalism."[14]

Some of the most prominent thinkers of the Enlightenment were virulent anti-Semites: Voltaire denounced the Jews as "the greatest scoundrels who have ever sullied the face of the globe".[15] The Jews, he wrote, "deserve to be punished," for it is their "destiny."[16] "The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters," wrote Voltaire, "always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous—cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity."[17] Immanuel Kant expressed similar views: "'The Jews still cannot claim any true genius, any truly great man. All their talents and skills revolve around stratagems and low cunning ... They are a nation of swindlers."[18]

Early Socialist Anti-Semitism

"It was in those days that the complaint arose that Jews were 'unproductive middle men,' 'economic parasites,'" wrote Edward H. Flannery, a professor at the Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University.[19] "It was shaped for the most part by socialist writers and became a favorite theme with later racist antisemites of a socialist stripe."[20] "Certain anti-economists affiliated with the socialist movement held Jews
to be potentates of an oppressive contemporary social order."[21] Among the French Left, observes Weissmann, were "numerous individuals and groups who considered class struggle and race struggle as one and the same thing—especially with reference to the Jews...."[22]

“Socialist anti-Semitism is indeed almost as old as modern Socialism,” writes historian Edmund Silberner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[23] Early socialism was inseparable from anti-Semitism, portraying Jews as exploiters, leeches and parasites.[24] "[V]irtually every major figure in the early history of socialism — including Friedrich Engels, Charles Fourier, Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx, and Joseph Proudhon — showed a marked antipathy to Jews," observes Daniel Pipes.[25] In his comprehensive survey of French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920, historian Zosa Szajkowski found not a single word on behalf of Jews.[26]

Leroux

Pierre Leroux (1797-1871), who coined the word "socialism", “identified the Jews with the despised capitalism, and regarded them as the incarnation of mammon, who lived by exploiting others.”[27] He condemned what he called "the Jewish spirit, the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, the spirit of commerce, of speculation, in a word, the banker spirit."[28] "The true successor of Napoleon," wrote Leroux, "is the Jew."[29]

Fichte

"[T]hrough almost all countries of Europe there is spreading a powerful, hostile state, which is perpetually at war with all other States, and which in some of them oppresses the citizens with the utmost severity: it is Jewry."[30] wrote the early socialist Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). "I see no other means of protecting ourselves against them, than by conquering their Promised Land and sending them all there."[31] Elsewhere, he suggested a more radical solution, in which Gentiles "chop off all their [Jews'] heads and replace them with new ones, in which there would not be a single Jewish idea."[32] In Fichte's text "we see the beginnings of the 'anticapitalist' impulse in modern antisemitism, which became central to revolutionist agendas for the redemption of humanity through the regeneration of Jewry," observes Guggenheim Fellow Anthony J. LaVopa.[33] Duquesne University professor Tom Rockmore comments that "available evidence points strongly to an early and perhaps enduring Marxian interest in Fichte's position."[34]

Fourier

Early socialist Charles Fourier (1768-1830) called Jews “parasites, merchants, and usurers;”[35] Fourier's disciple, Alphonse Toussenel, called Jews "the kings of the epoch," writing that "Europe is entailed to the domination of Israel. This universal domination, of which so many conquerors have dreamed, the Jews have in their hands."[36] "[I]ndustrial feudalism"—as Toussenel called capitalism—"is personified in the cosmopolitan Jew."[37]

Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), one of the leading socialist theorists of his day (and a correspondent of Marx), called Jews “the race which poisons everything” and “the enemy of the human race”;[39] "The Jew is by temperament an anti-producer, neither a farmer nor an industrialist nor even a true merchant," wrote Prodhon. "He is an intermediary, always fraudulent and parasitic, who operates, in trade as in philosophy, by means of falsification, counterfeiting, and horse-trading."[40] He wrote, "This race must be sent back to Asia, or exterminated."[41] "By fire or fusion, or by expulsion the Jew must disappear."[42]

Bakhunin

Mikhail Bakunin, Marx's intellectual rival in the First International, called Jews “an exploiting sect, a bloodsucking people, a unique devouring parasite,”[43] Jews, he wrote, are disqualified from socialist leadership by "that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principle traits of their national character."[44]

Hyndman

Henry Hyndman, founder of Britain's atheistic, Marxist Social Democratic Federation (Britain's first socialist party) and National Socialist Party (now part of the Labour Party), "repeatedly invoked the stereotype of the 'rich capitalist Jew' in his anti-semitic remarks."[45] "Jew moneylenders," complained Hyndman's Justice, Organ of the Social Democracy (the first Marxist periodical in England),[46] "now control nearly every Foreign Office in Europe."[47] He blamed the Boer war on "Jew financial cliques" and the "Jew-jingo press."[48]

L'Affaire Dryfus/"J'Accuse"

When the bourgeois[53] Victor Hugo, a cultural Catholic,[54] defended Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer scapegoated by the French army, the French socialist press published a manifesto denouncing Hugo's crusade on the grounds that Jewish capitalists would use the rehabilitation of a single Jew to wash out "all the sins of Israel."[55]

Organizations

Perhaps more important than the widespread anti-Semitism among socialist leaders was the anti-semitism of socialist groups such as the Socialist International and the Fabian Society.

Second International

After reference to the exploitation of workers by Jewish capitalists and denunciation of "philo-Semitic agitation," the Second International (the original Socialist International) adopted a resolution condemning not just antisemitic, but "philo-Semite outbursts as one of the means by which the capitalist class and the reactionary circles seek to divert the Socialist movement from its purpose and divide the workers."[56]

Fabian Society

Britain's Fabian Society (which "set up the banner of socialism militant")[57] hosted a number of anti-Semites, including Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, J.A. Hobson, and Oswald Mosley.

Beatrice Webb, who played a crucial role in the founding of the Fabian Society, wrote that “the strongest impelling motive of the Jewish race” was “the love of profit as distinct from other forms of money-earning.” (Italics in original.)[58] H.G. Wells wrote, "A careful study of anti-Semitism, prejudice and accusations might be of great value to many Jews," he wrote, "who do not adequately realize the irritation they inflict."[59] George Bernard Shaw once exhorted Jews to "stop being Jews and start being human beings."[60]

J.A. Hobson blamed London poverty on "the foreign Jew," whom he described as "a terrible competitor. He is ... almost void of social morality. No compunction or consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law; the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, is used unsparingly to enable him to take advantage of every weakness, folly, and vice of the society in which he lives."[61] "He craves the position of a sweating-master, the lowest step in a ladder that may lead to a life of magnificence, supported out of usury."[62] In his 1898 book Imperialism: A Study -- which would profoundly influence Lenin's Imperialism, the Higherst Stage of Capialism (1917) -- Hobson blamed the Boer War on "Jew power."[63] That war, he wrote, was fought for the benefit of "a small group of international financiers, chiefly German in origin and Jewish in race."[64]

One Fabian socialist from the 1920s and '30s, Oswald Mosley,[65] went on to found and lead the British Union of Fascists (which "at first was modeled after Mussolini’s example but later became patterned after Hitler"),[66] in which role he was lauded by Shaw.[67]

Anti-capitalist anti-semitism in Germany

During the 19th century, the center of left-wing anti-Semitism gradually shifted from Paris to Vienna, where the "radical-democratic and nationalist left wing" was headed by German Liberal Party leader Georg von Schönerer,[68] one of a group of "left-wing German liberals" who demanded "the exclusion of Jews from the new movement and as far as possible from public life";[69] Hitler would later ascribe to Schönerer "the wisdom of a prophet."[70] Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term "antisemitism," wrote that "anti-Semitism is a Socialist movement, only in nobler and purer forms than Social Democracy."[71] In late 19th century Germany, a popular critical view held that capitalism was a product of Jewish culture.[72] Adolf Stöcker, leader of the left-wing Christian Social Party, wrote, "I see in unrestrained capitalism the evil of our epoch and am naturally also an opponent of modern Judaism on account of my socio-political views."[73] Meanwhile, anti-capitalist leader Adam Müller said, “The Jewish messiah, the Antichrist, has come to earth in the guise of the steam engine, and this in order to speed up the end of the world.”[74] "The doctrine of egalitarian free economics and of corresponding human rights in economics, as they were formulated in a humanely well-meaning way by the Scotsmen Hume and Smith, were used by the Jews in order to derive from them their monopoly," according to the anti-semitic Die Judenfrage.[75] According to Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University:

“

German writers picked up on earlier anti-Enlightenment theories of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to rule the world. During the French Revolution, the Jews, along with the Masons, were identified as forces for liberalism, secularism, and capitalism. German writers quickly found the Jews to be a more popular target than the Masons, perhaps because they were more visible or more different. The originally Judeo-Masonic theories eventually discarded the other conspirators, such as the Templars and the Illuminati, and focused on the Jews.[76]

”

20th-century: Stalinist anti-Semitism

According to Henry L. Feingold, director of the Jewish Resource Center at Baruch College, "socialism contained the seeds to become the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals of the Left."[77] In the 20th century, those seeds took root and grew into a forest bearing poisonous fruit. For example, in the former Soviet Union, even after the death of the anti-Semite Stalin,[78] Soviet anti-Semitism persisted:

“

Since World War II Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth—and this includes Germany. By contrast, wherever anticapitalism or precapitalism has prevailed the status of Jews and Judaism has either undergone deterioration or is highly precarious. Thus at this very moment the country where developing global capitalism is most advanced, the United States, accords Jews and Judaism a freedom that is known nowhere else in the world and that was never known in the past. It is a freedom that is not matched even in Israel ... By contrast, in the Soviet Union, the citadel of anticapitalism, the Jews are cowed by anti-Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God.[79]

”

Likewise, according to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, during the Six Day War on Israel in 1967, the East German Communist regime employed former Nazi propagandists to write anti-Israeli propaganda, with the substitution of a few words such as “Israeli” for “Jew” and “progressive forces” for “National Socialism.”[80] Also in Germany, the Tupamoros-West Berlin, a Communist group headed by Dieter Kunzelmann (who would later become a leader of the Green Party),[81] attempted to bomb Berlin's Jewish Community Center during a commemoration of the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1969.[82] Meanwhile, Berlin's Red Brigade Faction, another Communist group, was led by Ulrike Meinhof, who stated, "Auschwitz means that six million Jews were murdered and carted on to the rubbish dumps of Europe for being that which was maintained of them—Money-Jews."[83] (Another founder of this group, Horst Mahler, was later revealed to have been an informant for the Stasi, the secret police of Communist East Germany.) The Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionäre Zellen), yet another German Communist group, joined with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (a hard-line Marxist terrorist group) to hijack an Air France flight to Entebbe, Uganda, where they singled out the Jewish passengers in a plot to murder them.[84] In 1985, the Palestine Liberation Front, then a Communist group, which had hijacked an Italian cruise ship, the MS Achille Lauro, murdered 69-year-old passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American, shooting him to death and rolling his wheelchair off the deck, dumping his body into the ocean. The PLF singled out Klinghoffer for murder because he was Jewish. Finally, the Sandinistas, a Marxist-Leninist group that seized control of the government of Nicaragua in 1979, supported a newspaper that proclaimed that "the world's money, banking and finance are in the hands of descendants of Jews ... [C]ontrolling economic power, they control political power as now happens in the United States."[85]

“

In 1979 many of the country's approximately 250 Jews fled abroad in the face of persecution and imprisonment by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). The FSLN bombed and partially destroyed the country's only synagogue, then confiscated the property shortly afterward and converted it into a youth training camp.[86]

”

21st-century anti-Semitism: the union of leftism and Islamism

In the 21st century these seeds have festered into full flower, with the embrace of Islamist anti-Semitism by the Left:

“

Although traditional Trotskyite ideology is in no way close to radical Islamic teachings and the shariah, since the radical Islamists also subscribed to anticapitalism, antiglobalism, and anti-Americanism, there seemed to be sufficient common ground for an alliance. Thus, the militants of the far left began to march side by side with the radical Islamists in demonstrations, denouncing American aggression and Israeli crimes. In Britain a new political party named Respect was established, uniting Trotskyites, Stalinists, Muslim Brotherhood militants, and similar groups.[87]

”

For example, the European Union's European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia decided not to publish its comprehensive study of the causes of anti-Semitism in Europe in 2003, a source familiar with the report told London's Financial Times, after the report uncovered "a trend towards Muslim anti-Semitism," and that "on the left there is also mobilization against Israel that is not always free of prejudice."[88]
That year, one academic, Michael Neumann, Professor of Philosophy at Canada's Trent University, wrote that he wants to

“

help the Palestinians.... I am not interested in the truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except so far as it serves that purpose. If an effective strategy means that some truths about the Jews don’t come to light, I don’t care. If an effective strategy means encouraging reasonable anti-Semitism, or reasonable hostility to Jews, I also don’t care. If it means encouraging vicious racist anti-Semitism, or the destruction of the State of Israel, I still don’t care.[89]

”

According to the progressive magazine Tikkun, "A.N.S.W.E.R. refuses to acknowledge or support the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination—though it supports that right for every other group with a history of oppression. When Jews are denied the rights of others, it is a tell-tale sign of anti-Semitism."[90]

“

[L]eftists who despise their own capitalist societies inevitably come to sympathize with militants—communists, Tier-mondistes, Islamists, it doesn't make any difference—who attack those societies from without. Right now, the only corner of the world putting up any sort of serious ideological fight against Western-style capitalism and liberalism is the Muslim Middle East. So, just as the left uncritically swallowed Stalin's propaganda in the 1930s, expect the left to increasingly swallow Arabist propaganda in our own era. And since one of the key elements of Arabist propaganda is a hatred of Israel and a suspicion of Jews, these building blocks of anti-Semitism will become more and more a part of mainstream leftist discourse.[91]

”

Thus in 2009, the "progressive" webzine Counterpunch.org, edited by Alexander Cockburn, son of Soviet agent[92] Claud Cockburn, could publish a revival of the "Blood Libel," alleging that Israeli Jews were killing Palestinian Muslims to harvest their organs.[93] A 2012 survey of 5,847 Jews in the European Union found that more than three out of four said anti-Semitism had increased over the preceding five years, and more respondents blamed perpetrators of the most serious incidents on the political left than the right, according to the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency.[94]

"[T]he left's anti-Semitism—which, of course, it never acknowledges and fervently denies—rather than the right's conventional version of this hatred comprises the key ingredient of anti-Semitism's current European existence."[95] Antisemitism may be found within much contemporary "antihegemonic, radical, liberal and socialist" discourse, admits David Hirsh of the University of London, who concedes that "antisemitism is a live and virulent threat."[96] "[T]he locus of anti-Semitism has moved from the right side of the political spectrum to the left ... These days, the hatemongers targeting Jews’ right to live peacefully spout the mantras of 'social justice' and 'peace studies,' not racial purity."[97]

“

The resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe "hails much more from the left than the right. The latter—mainly because of the continued illegitimacy and unacceptability of Nazism and fascism in European public opinion—has had a much more circumspect influence on how Jews and Israel are depicted than the left has had. Because classical anti-Semitism—certainly in its praxis—was mostly associated with the European right, the left enjoyed a certain bonus when it came to discussing all matters relating to Jews and Israel. The left could take liberties with being anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic that the right could never have. This legitimacy bonus enabled the left to employ anti-Israeli discourse that—in the meantime—has become completely common and acceptable parlance in Europe. Because of this general acceptability and overall legitimacy, left-wing anti-Semitism is much more relevant and disturbing than right-wing anti-Semitism.[98]

↑Yoni Petel, "Antisemitism on Campus: A Student's Perspective," League for Human Rights, B'nai B'rith of Canada, Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Racism, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, September 25, 2003